High-quality digital cameras for capturing photos and videos have now become ubiquitous due to their incorporation into mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. As a result, photos and videos are used more and more frequently in an ever-increasing number of applications as a means for people to convey ideas. Social media sites and applications have grown in popularity as platforms for individuals and companies to communicate through photos and videos. Technology improvements in wireless communication, internet speed, processing power, and memory now allow for large photo and video files to be taken and shared across various types of media more easily than ever before.
Businesses and other organizations have long used photo and video advertising campaigns to promote their goods, services, and causes through all kinds of visual media. Now that print and television advertising has been added to, and in some cases, supplanted by internet-based visual advertising, visual content has become central to the growth, recognition, popularity, and success of brands. All forms of visual advertising require the creation of visual content (e.g., photos for still ads and videos for commercials). In many cases, this content is professionally produced, with professional photographers, videographers, and production crew members. It is becoming more commonplace, though, for content may be created by users of a brand. For example, users of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat can take and post visual content and the tag brands via the brand's user name on the social media site or by searchable brand-related hashtags. Users have the ability to associate both positive and negative images with brands; for example, users can post images of themselves happily using a product, or can post a picture of a defective product along with a complaint. Brands can pay for individuals to purposely create such positive content for the brand (e.g., by sponsoring an athlete who posts a photo or video and tags the brand). Brands can also have users create content organically, by the users' own volition. However, brands have little control over the production quality of content created by individual users, regardless of whether those users are paid or not.
Companies have sought to leverage the power of individual users to enhance their brands. Because so many individuals have high-quality mobile digital cameras, and because so many of these individuals are willing and able to create visual content, opportunities exist for improved systems, methods, applications, and platforms for creating, sharing, and editing such content.